Music From Memory: Heisei No Oto – Japanese Left-Field Pop From The CD Age 1989-1996 Vinyl 2LP Music From Memory

“Compiled by long-time friends of the label, Eiji Taniguchi and Norio Sato, Heisei No Oto delves into a world of music released almost exclusively on CD and brings together a fascinating selection of discoveries from a little known and overlooked part of Japan’s musical history. Sometime around the mid-2000s, two Osaka record store owners, Eiji Taniguchi of Revelation Time and Norio Sato of Rare Groove, along with a handful of deep Japanese diggers such as Chee Shimizu of Organic Music records in Tokyo, began to explore beyond the typical ‘grooves’ or ‘breaks’. Much like their counterparts in Europe and the US, they began delving into home-grown ambient, jazz, new wave and pop records, discovering visionary music, often driven by synthesizers or drum computers, that broke beyond the typical confines of their genres. Yet as YouTube algorithms and vinyl reissues would transport such music into the global consciousness and demand and therefore scarcity intensified for such records, so Eiji and Norio have recently begun to turn their attention to CDs. Marking the culmination of one of the most rapid economic growths in Japanese history, 1989 also coincided with the music industry’s final shift away from vinyl in favor of CDs. While musicians such as the seminal Haruomi Hosono, whose productions feature on a number of tracks, would continue to push the boundaries of these new technologies, these technological advances also meant less established musicians were able to make use of increasingly affordable but state-of-the-art equipment. Reimagined here than under the encompassing term ‘Left-field Pop’, this is an exciting chapter in Japanese musical history that has only just begun to be fully explored.” – Music From Memory

• compilation of rare tracks by Haruomi Hosono, Yasuaki Shimizu, Toshifumi Hinata, Ichiko Hashimoto, Jun Sato, Keisuke Kikuchi + more on vinyl for the first time
• black double vinyl pressing
• housed in deluxe gatefold jacket w/ printed inner sleeves + obi strip
• contains liner notes by Chee Shimizu in Japanese + English plus rare photos + artist bios
• limited edition
• music label: Music From Memory 2021